


Burning Off The Mist

by Tridraconeus



Category: Naruto
Genre: Attempted Murder, Burning, CSA, Child Abuse, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gen, Graphic descriptions of violence, Interrogation, Knife injury, Mind Reading, Nonconsensual Mind Reading, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Repressed Memories, Sexual Abuse, Suicide mention, Teatime With Ibiki, Therapy With Ibiki, Torture, Unsanitary, rape mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 09:06:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19438291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tridraconeus/pseuds/Tridraconeus
Summary: Kirigakure had recently been the target of a bloody coup, and until everyone figured out who was in charge, whether they were legitimate, and whether the prior government would be roaring back for revenge, diplomacy and inter-village communication was just off limits. Normally, Konoha’s T&I would scoop up defectors or scattered loyalists and ply the whole story out of them; this time, there were none, not even whispers of dissent in the furthest-flung reaches of the Land of Water.It was a surprise to everyone, Konoha T&I included and especially, when three months later an ANBU squad investigating a disturbance on the border recovered a Kiri-nin.





	1. Day Zero

**Author's Note:**

> My motivation for writing this fic changed several times. First, it was as a character study of Ibiki. Then, I wanted to write about my OC. It became a combination of both. Also Kishi just went real wild with his angsty child prodigies and I want in on that energy. Updates on Mondays/whenever I want until complete. Chapters will range from 1000-2000 words and the fic will cap out at 11k. I'll put warnings for any triggering/squicky content in the beginning of each chapter as well as mark them in the tags. ALSO it's important that the underage/non-con stuff refers to things that are referenced! Ibiki is not a bad guy.  
> Note: Warning for mentions of torture.

Kirigakure had recently been the target of a bloody coup, and until everyone figured out who was in charge, whether they were legitimate, and whether the prior government would be roaring back for revenge, diplomacy and inter-village communication was just off limits. Normally, Konoha’s T&I would scoop up defectors or scattered loyalists and ply the whole story out of them; this time, there were none, not even whispers of dissent in the furthest-flung reaches of the Land of Water. The spy cell wasn’t due back for another week.

It was a surprise to everyone, Konoha T&I included and especially, when three months later an ANBU squad investigating a disturbance on the border recovered a Kiri-nin. That was the phrasing the scroll had used; not captured, nor made contact with, or even located, but recovered. The reason for the strange phrasing Ibiki discovered two days later, when two representatives from the squad presented the Kiri-nin to him.

He’d just finished off his last cup of coffee for the day when the pair appeared in his office. Ibiki took pride in knowing Konoha’s ANBU (and Iwa’s ANBU, and Ame’s ANBU, and occasionally Suna’s ANBU, on much less amicable terms) intimately. Once, he had been put in charge of debriefing. He’d restructured the process of debriefing returning ANBU and then was politely told that he should return to heading the Torture and Interrogation Force.

The Kiri-nin was wearing what could charitably be called clothes; Kiri’s standard-issue chūnin uniform, but rent and torn in so many places it seemed more scraps of fabric than clothes. His right wrist and ankle were splinted, and bandages wrapped around the top part of his face, and his hair was filthy and caked in blood. He wasn’t conscious when the ANBU woman in a badger mask laid his body on Ibiki’s desk, and stayed unconscious throughout the entire intake process.

He was finally left in one of the cells reserved for what Ibiki and Inoichi lovingly referred to as ‘problem subjects’; close enough to the interrogation rooms that transport was brief, close enough to the main office that response was swift, and large enough that significant restraint mechanisms and seals could be employed. Ibiki doubted those would need to be used, seeing as the chūnin was just under one hundred pounds and injured, and if not for the uniform Ibiki would have guessed he was a few weeks into being a genin.

It was impossible to tell with Kiri-nin, though. Always had been, always would be. A Kiri ANBU had slaughtered an entire division to keep them out of Ibiki’s hands. A genin poisoned his team when they failed the Chūnin Exams. A spy killed himself when the alternative was capture. When confronted, Kiri begged ignorance. Ibiki had not yet passed judgement on the coup; if it made it easier for him to actually interrogate a Kiri-nin instead of rely on hearsay and rumors, he might be in favor.

Regardless, it was late and the chūnin guard set to watch over the T&I facility at night was waiting on the other side of his door, so he set the newly-compiled file down in his desk, fixed the lay of his T&I-issued trench coat, and went home.

——

Name: —

Ninja Registration #: N/A

Village Affiliation: Kirigakure

Sex: Male

Rank: Chūnin

Age: —

Height: 158.1

Weight: 41.8 kg

Hair: Black

Eyes: —

[IMAGE: An unknown shinobi. A Kirigakure hitae-ate is tied loosely around his throat. He is leaned against a wall used to mark height, held up by hands that disappear out of frame. He has shoulder-length black hair, in bad condition, and his clothes are torn and dirty. There are fading bruises and superficial injuries on his arms and shoulders.]

[IMAGE: An unknown shinobi’s profile. His face is clean and bloodless, but there is evidence of a broken nose. His eyes are covered by bandages that wrap around his head.]

[IMAGE: An unknown shinobi’s profile. His top lip is pulled up to show top and bottom cuspids, sharper than average.]

NOTE: Sharp or serrated teeth is a common physical quirk in shinobi from Kirigakure or with water-nature chakra.

NOTE: Comprehensive file to be compiled at a later date, once more information is available.

——


	2. Day One: Introductions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To himself, Ibiki hoped he wasn’t one of the quiet ones. People who yelled and blustered inevitably said something useful, and Ibiki found it immeasurably satisfying when they finally broke. Quiet meant either scared to death, which was useful, or obdurate, which was not, and most rarely a shinobi with an iron-clad will that Ibiki had to dedicate extra time to.  
> Sometimes, of course, they were already broken, and most interrogators would consider them useless for information. Ibiki knew better. There was always something left to break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Teatime with Ibiki! Warning for mentions and descriptions of suicide. Warning for mentions and descriptions of torture.

The chūnin was awake when Ibiki returned in the morning, but so still and silent a lesser trained ninja would assume he was still asleep; but the sleeping weren’t so perfectly quiet, so fearfully still. If he thought playing dead would get him looked over, he was mistaken. Ibiki opened the cell door, pushing inside. He adjusted a soft bundle of fabric under his arm, giving the Kiri-nin time to shift from his side to a cross-legged sit. Luckily, his hair and clothes were the only things that were filthy. Evidently, the ANBU saw fit to make sure his skin wasn’t a breeding grounds for infection, which meant getting him clean clothes was effective and not throwing a bucket on a wildfire.

“I’m Morino Ibiki. I’ll be overseeing your interrogation for now. I’ve brought you some fresh clothes and someone will bring you to a debrief room shortly.”

He set the bundle down in front of him, then pushed it until it nudged against the Kiri-nin’s crossed legs. He pulled them onto his lap and nodded. To himself, Ibiki hoped he wasn’t one of the _quiet_ ones. People who yelled and blustered inevitably said something useful, and Ibiki found it immeasurably satisfying when they finally broke. Quiet meant either scared to death, which was useful, or obdurate, which was not, and most rarely a shinobi with an iron-clad will that Ibiki had to dedicate _extra_ time to.

Sometimes, of course, they were already broken, and most interrogators would consider them useless for information. Ibiki knew better. There was always something left to break.

—

Ibiki entered the debrief room with a small hand-held recording device and two cups of tea. The Kiri-nin was sitting at the table opposite the door, hands folded neatly in front of him and attached to the table with cuffs. His eyes were still covered, but the bandages were new and clean. Ibiki halfway expected him to have put the shirt on backwards, and wouldn’t have blamed him, but he looked perfectly put-together if not for the bandages and the blood-crusted, lank hair. If he were of a healthy weight, uninjured, and looked about ten years older, Ibiki could see reason to restrain him.

“I brought tea,” Ibiki told him in lieu of a greeting. “We’ll begin shortly.”

He set one cup down on the Kiri-nin’s side of the table, the recording device and the other cup down on his own. It was easy to set up. He could do it in a second— flipping switches, resetting tapes, miscellaneous little gestures of preparation and maintenance were usually done before—but taking his time and keeping his subject on edge before he’d even truly started was one of the small things he enjoyed about interrogation.

The Kiri-nin’s hand skimmed over the table. He’d clearly meant it to be quiet, but the drag of the connecting chain caught Ibiki’s attention. He was searching for the tea. He could reach it with no problem, Ibiki hadn’t set out to be _that_ cruel, but—

He couldn’t see. Right. Without warning, Ibiki reached over to seize him by the outside of his hand. The Kiri-nin stiffened, tensing against Ibiki’s grip; however slight, and however brief, because in the next second Ibiki guided his hand to the warm side of his cup and released him. The Kiri-nin clasped around the cup and pulled it to himself. His jaw flexed—he was biting his tongue. Ibiki stared at him a moment longer and returned to setting up the recording device.

“Are you going to torture me?”

It was something, he was _speaking_ , which meant that the aggravating quiet game some new intakes liked to play because they thought it made them tough was off the table. His voice was scratchy and hoarse from misuse, but too controlled to be fearful and too steady to be impulsive.

Ibiki waited a few seconds to think. The Kiri-nin waited for him quietly, cradling the tea in his hands.

“That depends on you. Are you going to cooperate?”

It was as true of an answer as Ibiki could give, which would have had to be a whole lot less true if the Kiri-nin had asked about _interrogation_.

The Kiri-nin’s fingers on his uninjured hand curled more tightly around his cup. Ibiki could be patient when it counted, so he waited patiently for the Kiri-nin to respond; to turn over the question and the consequences for answering incorrectly in his mind. He finally shook his head.

“No.”

If he thought that the Kiri-nin was easily manipulated or frightened enough to coerce, he’d sigh; like it was something he didn’t want to do, but his subject had made difficult and necessary, and leave the Kiri-nin alone for a while, and return with a deal that looked appealing but in reality was horribly unfair. He didn’t, though. Kiri-nin were tough. Even the genin murdered without a second thought. Ibiki liked to let his well-earned reputation do the majority of the heavy lifting these days—people broke more often to the thought of pain than the actual experience of it—but he didn’t foresee that working here.

“Then yes. You’re in a rough state right now so we won’t risk it, but if you don’t change your mind by this time next week we’ll do what’s necessary.”

The Kiri-nin nodded. “I’m not useful to you. You’d be better off killing me now than wasting resources.”

Ibiki grunted, and decided that it was a threat. “Don’t make me put you on a watch.”

The Kiri-nin made an abortive gesture, like he was going to cross his arms, but thought better of it and returned to the cup. “Why should I care what you do to me? I’m a dead man no matter what.”

“If you’re put on a watch, you don’t get a blanket.”

The chūnin wrinkled his nose and frowned, but didn’t say anything else. Ibiki was glad his eyes were covered; he’d smiled, and not the practiced kind of smile that made his subjects tremble. Finally, he switched the recording device on, pushing amusement to the side. “Begin the record. State the information required as decided after the Second Ninja World War by the council of Kages.”

“Nakamatsu Katsuo. Kirigakure does not abide by or maintain a ninja registration system. Kirigakure Chūnin.”

Ibiki had interrogated Kiri-nin in the past, and clearly they were taught that in the academy; they all said it the same. _Kirigakure does not abide by or maintain a ninja registration system_. He had a quiet, enduring hate for that. Konoha, of course, mandated that ANBU hide their identities, but the participants still existed within the system, as convoluted and bureaucratic as it was. Ibiki once spent an entire week trying to pry a name from a Kiri hunter-nin, only to find out that there were three _Karasu_ s within the ranks, and they shared the mask and name purely to keep potential defectors in the dark. He had then laughed and spit in Ibiki’s face, and wrenched so strongly against his restraints that he broke his own neck.

Shinobi dealt in subterfuge, that was true, but under subterfuge lurked truth. Under Kiri, there was nothing; only an army of ghosts, without even dog tags to mark their deaths.

He had one of Kiri’s ghosts sitting across from him now, made all the more ghostly by clinging gauze and the silvery lines of scars. He shifted his attention back to the interrogation.

“Your age?”

What was visible of Katsuo’s cheeks pinked, but to his credit he answered promptly. “Thirteen.”

The Intelligence Division _did_ have a file on the Nakamatsu clan, but Ibiki hadn’t seen one of them in his interrogation rooms before, and so would have to double-check the information he was being given. At least now he could pull files from there instead of having to make an entirely new one.

“What do you know about the recent coup on Kirigakure?” Close to, but not quite, the moment of truth. Katsuo took a deep breath, steadying himself. He was leaned as far as he could go, chest against the edge of the table, clasping his cup to his chest.

“It was led by an inside faction. I don’t know who. I can’t tell you more.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” That question normally made shinobi shudder. Once, Ibiki left an Iwa chūnin sitting for ten minutes after he’d said he couldn’t say more; then, once Ibiki had asked him, he’d broken down weeping, and confessed to everything. Katsuo seemed content enough to cradle his tea close. From his short stint in the ANBU Reception Division and even shorter stint directly handling returning operatives, Ibiki recognized the hollow, distant state of mind different from the one ANBU _had_ to have—where he’d recommend being taken off of field work, just in case.

“Can’t, and won’t.”

“Let’s change the subject. The coup happened three months ago. I’m told you were found when a group of rebels tried to dump your body at the border. Tell me what you know about the rebels.”

Katsuo sighed, covering the top of his cup with a hand and resting his chin there, then his cheek, just for a moment. Then he sat up straight, pushing the cup in front of him, away from him but still within reach.

“They’re from within the village. They’re genin and chūnin, no jōnin and no ANBU. Anybody truly loyal to Kiri wouldn’t be found in their ranks. They don’t like my clan—they see us as part of the establishment. They’re revolutionaries, unhappy with the status quo and Kiri’s traditions.”

Ibiki knew what he should ask next—he should try to ply names and faces out of Katsuo. But the way he was speaking—it was strange, like he thought it was a revolution swiftly crushed.

“How long did they have you?”

“Three months.” 

Ibiki would have preferred he know at least a little about what had happened after, but it seemed like what any revolution tended to do—snatching up what they hated and tearing it apart. For three months. And then dumping the evidence on Konoha’s doorstep. He wouldn’t be getting anything else out of Katsuo today, that was for sure, and with the admission of how long he’d been held a comprehensive physical went from optional to necessary.

“End the record.”

He flipped the recording device off and tucked it into a pocket of his trench coat. He’d have to bring one of the elite chūnin in to review the tape with him. In the meantime, Katsuo had to go back to his cell and he had to contact a medic-nin to oversee a physical.

“Are you done with your tea?”

“Yes. Thank you.” He pushed the cup to nearly the center of the table, but the chain wasn’t long enough to allow that, so he nudged the cup the few extra centimeters with his fingertips. Ibiki unlocked the cuffs, removing them from Katsuo’s wrists and setting them down on the table with a muted clank. He set a hand on Katsuo’s upper arm, motioning for him to stand, and took him back to his cell.


	3. Day Two: Medical Exam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ibiki had just enough time to wash his hands and brew a fresh cup of coffee before the medic-nin dropped in. He was a chūnin of indeterminate gender and age, and one of the few people to be able to claim getting the drop on Ibiki—he credited spending so much time on wards with kunai-happy, bedbound shinobi. Ibiki didn’t know if that meant they were merely too injured to leave bed, or actually tied down, but knowing the iron wills of the medic-nin he suspected the latter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentions and descriptions of torture. Warning for mentions of rape, but like, not too directly. Semi-graphic descriptions of injury. This is by far the most potentially triggering chapter in my opinion.  
> WOW i'm so not used to updating on mondays, also, medic-nin are shaped like friends.

Ibiki entered the Intelligence Division building at six. The lights were on and the door to the break room was open, and he smelled coffee, so Nobuyuki was writing up his report and waiting for his coffee to brew. Ibiki, despite himself, liked routine. He liked arriving on time, and he liked it when Nobuyuki personally handed the night’s report to him instead of leaving it on his desk. He’d barely exchanged ten words with the man besides polite and professional greetings when they’d first met each other, and Ibiki liked it that way. Nobuyuki was a good chūnin and a loyal shinobi, and he knew that Ibiki liked routine; so for the past five years, he brewed coffee in the morning whether he drank it or not and handed Ibiki his report on his way out. Ibiki took the sheet of paper from him, they nodded to each other, and a few seconds later the door to the Konoha Intelligence Division clicked shut.

He sat at his desk and reviewed the report, as he had every day for the past five years, and tucked it in its place in the file cabinet. Nobuyuki had a knack for noticing the little things, and often left observations and recommendations at the bottom of his reports—today, it was a captured spy from a small, distant village crying in the middle of the night, and Ibiki made a note on his to-do list to visit him first. Then he had to sit in on the medic-nin’s examination of the Kiri-nin. Then he had to attend a meeting with the Kage and some members of ANBU. Then, finally, he had to do paperwork, or push the paperwork off on one of the elite chūnin, and he’d agreed to go out drinking with Anko, Kotetsu, and Izumo in the evening, though he suspected they wouldn’t miss him if he chose to bake something at home and go right to sleep. All in all, a quiet day that he found himself looking forward to.

There was always the chance that the Kage called him in to intimidate somebody, though. She liked doing that. Maybe one day he’d even get to interrogate them. There was a smaller chance that somebody was brought in who needed his immediate personal attention. Regardless of what, he needed to stay on his toes-- he sighed and finished his first cup of coffee.

He checked his trench coat pocket for his favorite garrote and made his way to the spy’s cell, and left the man—crying again—two hours later.

Ibiki had just enough time to wash his hands and brew a fresh cup of coffee before the medic-nin dropped in. He was a chūnin of indeterminate gender and age, and one of the few people to be able to claim getting the drop on Ibiki—he credited spending so much time on wards with kunai-happy, bedbound shinobi. Ibiki didn’t know if that meant they were merely too injured to leave bed, or actually tied down, but knowing the iron wills of the medic-nin he suspected the latter.

“Ibiki-san. I’m here.”

“Yasu-san. Come in.” He stood, brushing off his front. “I asked for a comprehensive exam. I know the protocol.”

Which, unfortunately, meant leaving the room if the medic-nin examiner asked him to. The examination room was bugged floor to ceiling, so there was no chance for obvious subterfuge to occur, but he still thought, every time, that he should petition the Kage to change the rules.

She always sided with the medic-nin, for obvious reasons. Their word was law.

“I’ll take you to the examination room and fetch the prisoner. Here’s the file for you.”

“Anything else I should know, Ibiki-san?” Yasu took the file, flipping it open, walking slightly behind Ibiki’s shoulder to the examination room.

“Nothing that we can discern.”

“Understood.”

Ibiki left Yasu to prepare his kit and files, setting off to Katsuo’s cell.

He glanced through the window— Katsuo was sitting cross-legged, meditating— and opened the door.

“Nakamatsu. I’m taking you to your physical examination.”

He looked a lot cleaner. His hair was brushed, and still damp, so he’d been washed and either been allowed a brush to groom himself or someone had done it for him. Ibiki resolved to find out which, and who, because he didn’t want Konoha’s Interrogation Force getting a reputation for being soft— but even a prisoner didn’t deserve to be left in filth. Ibiki would have just cut his hair. It was faster.

Katsuo nodded, standing— he favored his splinted ankle, and leaned against the wall to feel his way to the front of the cell where Ibiki was waiting. Ibiki gripped him just below the shoulder again, tugging him outside the cell and taking him to the examination room. Katsuo had to do an awkward little hop-step to keep pressure off of his ankle and avoid messing the splint, and reached over to grab Ibiki’s wrist for stability. Perhaps Ibiki should have just carried him, or dragged him, but the former was soft and the latter would see Yasu chastising him for causing unnecessary damage before an exam, and it was encouraging to see that despite his declarations of otherwise Katsuo cared enough to take care of himself. Ibiki wasn’t sure what he would do if he had to deal with someone who didn’t care whether they were dead or not.

Ibiki led him to the metal stool in the center of the examination room, then pushed him to sit. He sat, crossing his ankles, posture prim and straight. Once assured that he was where he should be, Ibiki withdrew to stand by the door.

“I’m going to begin the examination now, Ibiki-san,” Yasu informed him, and did not wait for a response before setting in. He had Katsuo remove his shirt and pants, taking his height and weight to overwrite what had been put down on his intake. He asked a few curt questions— pain, stiffness and soreness, depth or loss of sensation, and Katsuo answered quietly for most. He pricked Katsuo’s finger to obtain a blood sample for typing and analysis.

Finally, he turned his attention to the bandages and splints, retrieving scissors from his open kit. Ibiki noted, not for the first time, the overlap between a medic-nin and an interrogators kit.

“I’m going to take the splints off. It looks like you don’t need them anymore,” Yasu observed. He poked and prodded, rotating Katsuo’s ankle a few times. Ibiki noted how the sides of his mouth tensed, but he remained silent. “A brace, at most. I can’t heal it— it’s already started healing by itself, and the same with the wrist. Try not to put too much pressure on them for now.”

Katsuo nodded again.

“I’m going to take off the bandages around your head.”

Ibiki paid closer attention. He knew the Nakamatsu clan had a dōjutsu— the specifics were highly-guarded, and though Ibiki had yet to properly dig through the files on the Nakamatsu clan he remembered that even though the Third Mizukage hailed from that clan, knowledge of the dōjutsu remained scant.

“They burned them,” Katsuo finally divulged. Yasu hummed, signaling that he was listening, and carefully unfastened the bandages. “Before they— thought they killed me, one of them used a fire-style jutsu on my eyes to destroy them. They were hasty. They knew they’d be discovered, and they wanted to rid themselves of the evidence as quickly as possible.”

“If it’s recent, I can see if I can heal the damage. Tell me more of what they did to you while I do.”

Ibiki crossed his arms. The Nakamatsu dōjutsu, the Rokugan, became feared during the Second and Third World Wars. Ibiki had never seen it in person. As the white swathe of bandages fell away, he caught sight of black and gold surrounded by red and cracked skin, blocked quickly by the pale green light of medical chakra.

“They liked to— hurt and humiliate me. They told me they’d kill me every day, and sometimes they’d force me to eat rotten food, and if I couldn’t keep it down they’d make me...” his voice trailed off. Ibiki heard shame, disgust, but no anger. He picked at a nail with his thumbnail. “They liked to keep me awake until I hallucinated.”

“How do your eyes feel?” Yasu removed his hands, and Ibiki finally got a good look at the dōjutsu—black everywhere except the irides. Those were gold, with no pupils to speak of. Katsuo looked briefly as if he was about to cringe away from the light. He looked at Yasu instead, managing a small smile. The nails of his uninjured hand were digging into his leg. Ibiki noticed it, and noted it away.

“Much better. Thank you.”

“And are you able to keep food down?”

“I am.”

Yasu tapped the back of his uninjured wrist, prompting Katsuo to lift it up, and then pinched the top, pulling the skin up and seeing how quickly it settled. “Dehydrated.”

Once his hand was released, Katsuo tucked it back in his lap and covered it with the other. Yasu turned to the side to mark down a few notes in the file. Katsuo snuck a glance at Ibiki, rapidly returning his attention to Yasu once they made eye contact.

“Did they treat your injuries?”

“Only the severe ones.” He had a few ugly scars on his belly, sides, and thighs; great pale furrows and puckers in his flesh, knotted and furled scar tissue from rudimentary but effective healing techniques. There was a relatively new one stretching from just under his arm to the top of his thigh, scabbed over and inflamed.

“It’s infected.” Yasu passed his hand over Katsuo’s chest, skipping over his underclothes to address the infection on his thigh instead.

“Ibiki-san?” Yasu glanced to him, then his eyes flickered to the door. Ibiki nodded curtly, opening the door and stepping out. He stepped to the one-way window, flipping on the listening device.

“I’m going to ask you a few more questions about what they did to you,” Yasu asked, voice still businesslike, but Ibiki knew why he’d been asked to leave. He didn’t feel bad about listening in. He did regret that Katsuo couldn’t give him names or faces.

When he was allowed back in, Yasu handed him the original file and put the copy in his kit. Yasu surely knew that the examination room was bugged, if the look he gave Ibiki said anything, but he didn’t make any comments and left as soon as he’d cleaned up. Ibiki reached to take Katsuo by the shoulder again.

“You don’t have to drag me,” Katsuo interrupted. Ibiki was sure he’d shrink away if he let his hand get any closer.

Ibiki huffed, amused, and decided— _what the hell_. He turned his hand over, offering Katsuo his arm instead, and was only a little surprised when the Kiri-nin accepted it.


	4. Day Three: Records Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bandit leader. Confessed. Scheduled for a medic-nin visit and prison pickup, and his interrogator scheduled for a talk about the judicious breaking of bones. Check.  
> Genin. Framed in spectacular fashion. Really, truly had no idea of what he was accused of. Scheduled to talk to a psych-nin and be released. Check.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: No warnings—wow! Just kidding. Brief mention of suicide.   
> Slow-ish chapter, but Ibiki gets to exercise some… other parts of his job, like processing incoming ninja who got their memories sealed, and paperwork. So much paperwork. This is the infodump chapter for the Nakamatsu clan.  
> No kiddo in this chapter :(

Ibiki arrived at six, received the night’s report from Nobuyuki, brewed a cup of coffee, and sat down at his desk to make the day’s agenda and catch up on paperwork. As usual, he had an hour of peace before the interrogators under him arrived. The Force was smaller than it used to be—taking blows from war, from skirmishes, from the fatigue that came from torturing people. He needed to recruit new blood.

Most people thought they were naturally good interrogators. Ibiki knew better; what most people thought of as interrogation was merely torture, and hurting someone without aim was something that Ibiki looked for to avoid. Maybe he could poach one or two ANBU past their prime?

Fat chance. He’d be better off asking Tsunade for any medic-nin she thought had promise. He returned to the stack of paperwork on his desk, silently accepting good-morning’s from the on-duty members of the Force, trickling in and dispersing to the break room or their offices, or down the hall to the cells.

Around midday, he closed the door to his office. He’d just barely sat down when someone knocked. Ibiki sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. What had he expected? _Privacy?_

“Come in.”

A bird-masked ANBU stood at his desk and slid the mission report over to Ibiki. He opened it, looking over a brief message at the bottom—from the Hokage.

_Ibiki._

_Ahiru was ambushed by a rogue shinobi cell and claims his memories have been sealed. Hold him until the Analysis Team can verify and retrieve what information they can._

_Tsunade._

He tucked the report under a book— _Interrogation in the First Shinobi World War_ —and nodded curtly. If Tsunade sent Ahiru to the interrogation side of the Intelligence Division, it meant he was potentially compromised and had to be confined—for everyone’s sake. He stood and moved from behind the desk, gesturing for Ahiru to follow.

“Come with me, Ahiru.”

The ANBU followed him, silent. It would be unfair to leave him in a cell without even a timeframe to look forward to, so Ibiki pieced one together, of things he could know without the knowledge being dangerous if there ended up being some sort of spy genjutsu implanted in him.

“Inoichi will return in two days—I’ll leave you up to him. Until then, try and see what you can remember. I’ll have a medic-nin come in to examine you tomorrow.”

Ahiru nodded and entered the cell when Ibiki motioned for him to, taking a seat in the center of the room. He bowed his head, settling into meditation that he would normally do in the debrief office, and Ibiki closed the cell door.

He returned to his office and, once again, stared down the pile of paperwork. It was greatly reduced from where it was—it was still excessive, and in the ten minutes it took to relocate Ahiru two reports had accumulated in the ‘incoming documents’ box. Ibiki sighed and sat down, pulling the box to himself. The sooner he finished here, the sooner he could dig through the records and find out just what one of his subjects being a Nakamatsu meant for him.

Bandit leader. Confessed. Scheduled for a medic-nin visit and prison pickup, and his interrogator scheduled for a talk about the judicious breaking of bones. Check.

Genin. Framed in spectacular fashion. Really, truly had no idea of what he was accused of. Scheduled to talk to a psych-nin and be released. Check.

A letter from Suna’s head of Intelligence. Ibiki didn’t even want to touch that one, since it would inevitably be about loosening rules about where dignitaries could go unaccompanied—never—or about sending some trainees to Konoha to study under the best—maybe. It was the latter, and he cleverly made sure he didn’t have to send an answer that day by deciding he had to talk it over with the Hokage first. Check?

A request to interrogate a missing-nin held in a prison by the border, except he was also informed that the missing-nin would be arriving in a week, so it was less a request and more a polite heads-up. Check.

He finished two hours later, retired to the break room to eat lunch and discuss technique with one of the elite chūnin, and then finally was able to visit the Records Room. Ibiki knew the room was a mess, but he’d taken it over from a complete hoarder with no sense of organization, and it just wasn’t worth it to organize. There was a method to the madness. Perhaps one day he’d bring in an academy teacher to tear it down and build it back up, color-coded, alphabetized, and sorted by village and rank. Ibiki didn’t make a habit of being scared of his fellow Konoha-nin; he made a very rare exception for the academy teachers and their very special brand of organized chaos.

Kirigakure was in the far corner, approximately where it was on the map. Stored in the file cabinet were prestigious clans, and somewhere within lurked the file on the Nakamatsu clan. He dug the file out. It was pitifully thin. If it had more than names, Ibiki would be pleased. What a clan to let slip under the radar… a former Mizukage, and a dōjutsu Konohagakure knew next to nothing about.

_Originally a small but well-established mercenary clan, the Rokugan appeared in Kirigakure at the advent of the First Shinobi World War. The Nakamatsu clan appears to have had a high incident of infant mortality; fewer than one third of observed pregnancies result in a living child three years later. This number greatly improved after the Third Shinobi World War. Members of the Nakamatsu clan served in positions in Kirigakure’s military and held positions on the council. Nakamatsu Kosuke became the Third Mizukage, and died under uncertain circumstances. The Nakamatsu remain a powerful and influential clan in Kirigakure politics._

The back of the file had a prospective family tree of the head family. Sure enough, there was Katsuo; he had two brothers, the older one dead.

_Perfect_. Just about as much information as Ibiki would find on a Ninja Info Card. He toted the file back to his office and set to integrating what little information he’d managed to get from the chūnin into the file.

On a new sheet of paper, he wrote down what description he could of the dōjutsu. There was nothing on the abilities—only that it was suspected it worked as a sensor, like the Hyūga dōjutsu, and that it did not play well with genjutsu, in that the Uchiha faced a real challenge when meeting a Nakamatsu in the field. Anyone who could tell him anything else was either dead or locked in a cell not wanting to talk to him, or not able to— he wasn’t quite sure what that mixture was yet. Hopefully when Inoichi returned his squad had some information—he doubted it.

Regardless, it may not exist in the world for much longer. He was still unsure of what was going to happen to Katsuo at the end of it all. If he had living relatives, Tsunade would likely rule he be released to them. If he didn’t, Ibiki might be told to attempt to recruit him. He might just be executed or sent to prison—Ibiki didn’t see that happening. He might take the traditional way of the Kiri-nin captive. Ibiki briefly entertained the thought that he might be sent back to Kirigakure, but Tsunade wasn’t that cruel.

He had to talk to her today anyway, and hopefully before she was drunk.

He’d make more progress on the file tomorrow—he still had some things to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got questions? Comments? Criticism? Let me hear it!


	5. Day Four: Interrogation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was rare that a shinobi came to him wanting to betray their village, of course, or their bandit crew, or secret organization, or whatever group they had bound themselves to, and most were willing enough to die for it. Once they’d spilled everything they knew to Ibiki, they often did—and by that time, he’d broken down their loyalty enough that it was a mercy.  
> He didn’t expect a Kiri-nin to break at the slightest psychological prodding, though, especially one that was so shell-shocked he thought that telling Ibiki he wouldn’t answer a question to his face was a good idea. Again, rehabilitation.  
> “It doesn’t help you to be defiant.”  
> “It doesn’t help you either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Warning for mentions and descriptions of torture. Warning for mentions of rape. Not really an interrogation all the way, but Therapy With Ibiki doesn’t have the same ring to it.  
> Also I do think it's hilarious that Ibiki is both Konoha's head of T&I and helps run the Chunin exams, like, I'm just imagining this new crop of enemy shinobi who are not scared of Ibiki at all. and then he puts the fear of god into them.  
> anyway enjoy the chapter

Aside from a brief introductory interview, the physical examination, and Ibiki’s short stint in digging through the disaster zone of the Records Room, Ibiki hadn’t done much work on the Nakamatsu. For one, Ibiki was now sure he wasn’t able to articulate what he knew about the coup; no names, no faces, nothing besides the hell he’d been put through for three months, and that wasn’t exactly valuable intel.

He had a job to do, even if he really, really, _really_ thought that Katsuo should be in an entirely different division of the Intelligence building. Rehabilitation, or therapy, even. Even if he was an enemy shinobi. Would the new Kirigakure consider him a missing-nin?

Ibiki knew he shouldn’t feel sympathy for enemy shinobi. For the most part, he didn’t. Tsunade had seemed _very_ keen on recruiting him if it turned out he was alone in the world once the spy cell returned, and there were few advocates more powerful than the Hokage herself.

This time, he knocked on the cell door first before opening the door—Katsuo was asleep, or at least pretending to be, and Ibiki still had no idea how he’d react when surprised, and he wanted to avoid having to hurt him in the name of discipline.

So, a knock.

He opened the door when Katsuo stood. He folded the blanket, dropping it in the corner, shifting away from the wall, and walked to a respectful distance away. Ibiki would have to move forwards to grab him, which he no doubt could do. Instead, Ibiki offered his arm again. The silence changed from tense to relieved, and they walked to the room Ibiki had set up prior without incident.

Ibiki did not necessarily want to address the reasons why Katsuo was so adamant on keeping his distance. Most of them were to his benefit—he certainly carried himself like someone his enemies should avoid. Still, as he secured Katsuo’s wrists into the cuffs attached to the table, he thought of how Katsuo tried to avoid all touch, not just the kind that hurt, because Ibiki hadn’t actually hurt him since they’d met.

Ibiki was bigger, stronger, and—most importantly—had given no indication that he wasn’t given _carte blanche_ in dealing with his prisoners. Twenty years ago, he would have felt sick. He sat down across from Katsuo, waiting until the chūnin stopped examining the room and stopped pretending he wasn’t paying attention to Ibiki.

“You don’t have to worry about that here.”

“I’m not.” Immediately. Ibiki wasn’t sure whose benefit he was lying for—trying to keep Ibiki happy, or trying to save his pride. It was just something shinobi didn’t admit to. It was lumped in with torture, and sometimes even just written off as an incident so the shinobi in question didn’t have to report it past that. Ibiki, personally, didn’t even consider it weapon in the toolbox; officially, because there was no way to properly train against it.

“You were doing well. Don’t start lying to me now.”

Silence. He’d realized a while ago that silence was Katsuo’s reaction to most things, and that different types of silence had wildly different meanings. This was a penitent silence.

“Begin the record. Today, I’ll be asking you some questions about Kirigakure and your family’s dōjutsu.”

Katsuo was grateful enough that he wasn’t being pressed to not comment or even look too reluctant. He nodded, shifting his hands on the table, twisting one of the chains around his finger and letting it fall back to the table.

“It says here that your dōjutsu is a natural counter to genjutsu. Is that so?” He’d start easy, Ibiki decided. It was something the clan was known for.

“Yes.” Katsuo was wary and reserved now that the questions had started. His hands folded neatly over each other and his ankles were crossed; he’d created a barrier to rebuff conversation, projecting detachment more loudly than fear. Ibiki saw that often in people who had been tortured poorly before coming into his hands; the ones who thought that pain was the inevitable conclusion to being asked questions. Ibiki couldn’t necessarily blame the boy— pain wasn’t off the table yet, especially now that Katsuo was easing back into the frame of mind that feared it.

“It appears to be in a permanently active state. Is this true?”

“It’s true.”

Ibiki continued like that, already-established facts or likely speculation until Katsuo’s shoulders weren’t quite so tense; until his fingers lay flat against his skin instead of digging in. Until he was cooperative, more because Ibiki wasn’t asking him anything compromising than because he’d decided to be helpful.

Ibiki decided to push, just a little. Keeping the topic on the Rokugan seemed a safe bet, so asking about specifics that he _didn’t_ know was the next logical step.

“Your dōjutsu. How does it counter genjutsu?”

“I was taught how to control it, but for purposes of countering enemy techniques, everyone has different chakra.” He paused, abruptly freezing like a rabbit, hiding back under a veneer of neutrality. Ibiki held back a smile; there it was. A chink in the armor.

“So it has to do with your opponent’s chakra and not your own?”

He didn’t respond—his nails were digging into the backs of his hands again. The rhythm was gone. Ibiki lowered his voice, shifting his tone into a softer register— no less insistent, not yet dangerous, still playing the stern-but-fair card. “It can stay this easy, Kiri. Answer the question.”

Katsuo met his eyes. “Kirigakure didn’t become strong by giving our secrets away to whoever asks. I’m not going to tell you.”

Ibiki crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. After all this time, still clinging onto loyalty to his village. Even in his line of work he had admiration for that. It was rare that a shinobi came to him wanting to betray their village, of course, or their bandit crew, or secret organization, or whatever group they had bound themselves to, and most were willing enough to die for it. Once they’d spilled everything they knew to Ibiki, they often did—and by that time, he’d broken down their loyalty enough that it was a mercy.

He didn’t expect a Kiri-nin to break at the slightest psychological prodding, though, especially one that was so shell-shocked he thought that telling Ibiki he wouldn’t answer a question to his _face_ was a good idea. Again, rehabilitation.

“It doesn’t help you to be defiant.”

“It doesn’t help you either.”

Ibiki laughed. He preferred this over the first day they’d talked, for sure—personality meant he was getting somewhere. Katsuo was useless for information about the coup until Inoichi and the rest of the Analysis Team returned to pick his brain, and he might already know all there was to know. Mawashi was busy, but he could give him a write up and see what he thought.

“Let’s make a deal. You’re in here for another half-hour, no matter what. You can sit here and be uncooperative and I’ll just have someone else question you later today. _Or_.”

Katsuo was listening. He was looking down at the table, hands clasped together, prepared to be as frustrating as possible, but he was listening.

“Tell me something—Anything, it doesn’t have to be incriminating—and you’ll be left alone for the rest of today.”

His eyes narrowed in distrust. Ibiki looked up at the ceiling, giving him a moment away from scrutiny.

“I fought my best friend for my graduation exam.”

Now _that_ was interesting. Ibiki knew about Kirigakure’s graduation exam; in his opinion it was little more than bloodsport. If they didn’t do it, they’d have a population to rival Konohagakure’s. Instead, they were the smallest of the main five ninja villages.

“And when was that?” He stayed looking up at the ceiling. This room wasn’t built to be overtly threatening. It wasn’t smaller than normal. The ceiling was a normal height. It was the same clinical white as the examination room, lit just as brightly. Cold and impersonal, but not threatening. Ibiki brought witnesses in here sometimes, since it was the only room with the table bolted to the center of the room instead of off to the side.

“Two years ago.”

“And you’re a chūnin already?” Ibiki supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. As heir to one of Kirigakure’s most prominent clans, it made sense that he’d be well-prepared—and he’d probably proctored the first part of his exam. No wonder Katsuo wasn’t as afraid as he should have been.

Conjecture. No use thinking about it right now.

Silence. Ibiki waved. “Go ahead.”

“It’s random. You don’t know who you’ll be up against, and we were both… useful, and loyal. I’m not pleased it ended up the way it did.”

Quiet, again, waiting for Ibiki to respond, or tell him to stop, or give him permission to go on. When none of those things happened, he continued.

“When we entered the academy, we promised to go out for dango to celebrate. I wish that I could have, but I was stronger than him.”

“Do you think it was right?”

Silence. Thoughtful silence with an edge to it. Unhappy.

“I think he should have fought someone else. He would have won, then.”

While it was indeed an answer, it wasn’t what Ibiki was looking for.

“But do you think it was right?”

“Our graduation exam weeds out weak shinobi. That’s what it’s supposed to do.”

Ibiki finally looked at him. Katsuo looked away, staring at the pocket of his slate-gray interrogator’s shirt.

“It’s tradition. We’ve always done it that way.”

Ibiki’s turn to leverage silence. He uncrossed his arms, propping his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his hands. Katsuo stared at the table.

“It’s my village. Of course it’s right.”

Ibiki couldn’t say he hadn’t expected that response. “End the record.”

He stood, moving to Katsuo’s side to unlock the cuffs. He tucked the key back and returned to check the recording device, paying just enough attention to the rustling of fabric to know that Katsuo had stood. When he turned to him, Katsuo beat him to the punch; he held his hand out before Ibiki could offer his arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos! Comment! I eat and breathe it!


	6. Day Five: Debriefing The Spy Cell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The spy cell filed into the break room, speaking quietly amongst themselves. Ibiki set his coffee down on the table, gesturing for them to sit— they did.  
> “Thank you all for stopping by before going the mission office.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Warning for mentions of murder. Warning for mentions of torture. Warning for mentions of suicide. A lot!  
> Also I love Inoichi.

The spy cell filed into the break room, speaking quietly amongst themselves. Ibiki set his coffee down on the table, gesturing for them to sit— they did.

“Thank you all for stopping by before going the mission office.”

“Not a problem, Ibiki-san. I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.” That was Inoichi. He crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair.

There were two kunoichi in the squad—a blonde, stereotypically pretty with dewy skin and doe eyes, could have passed for Inoichi’s sister and Ibiki would have suspected as much if he didn’t know otherwise—and a brunette with short, spiky hair and tattoos covering nearly every visible inch of skin. Summons. Seals. Chakra masking. Ibiki had tried to recruit her for the Torture and Interrogation Force. It didn’t work out. Her captain had a tighter grip on the Infiltration Team than he’d expected for such a bunch of slippery maniacs.

The blonde spoke first.

“We arrived a month after the coup. It isn’t difficult to get into the Land of Water, they don’t seem to care who comes in, but it was a nightmare to leave. We ended up stowing out on a cargo ferry.”

Ibiki grunted. “What did you find out?”

“It’s still bloody. The Academy’s deserted. Most of the prominent clans have been wiped out, or they’re revolutionaries.” She frowned. “Civilians seem passive to it. The businesses are operating as normal. They don’t seem to care, and they all claim to be loyal to the new government, or at least optimistic. I imagine it’s different outside of Kirigakure, but that wasn’t our assignment.”

“How talkative?” Strange. There were normally at least a few people unhappy with the state of things, no matter where.

“Nobody would tell us anything. I think… by the time we were about to leave, they had us made as spies.”

Inoichi nodded in agreement. “We got some workable information, but we still have no idea who led the coup—we have six suspects, but they’re all holed away in the Kage’s tower, no faces or names. We thought we had a lead, but... Kohinata?”

Kohinata nodded. “I managed to infiltrate, but I couldn’t find who orders were coming from. There’s body doubles, but all issue orders with the same authority. There’s no way a group that large has remained harmonious on all the decisions and orders. It’s strange.”

Another spy piped up, the tattooed kunoichi, pulling a cloth-wrapped parcel from a pouch.

“We believe that messages were being sent out using these, but we can’t decipher them and they didn’t use the same drop-off point twice.” She unrolled it to reveal shorthand messages carved into riverstones. They were wrapped back up again and tucked into the pouch on her thigh, evidently bound for the Cipher Division head office at some point.

“Is there anything of immediate importance?”

Inoichi shook his head. “It appears that the new... government, I suppose, is stable. We were unable to make contact with loyalists. I’m not sure there’s any left in Kiri.”

“Thank you.” Disheartening, but not surprising. The cell nodded. The meeting was concluded, then. Nobody had anything more to say. Inoichi stood, tucking his hands in his pockets.

“Inoichi-san?” Ibiki spoke just before he turned.

“I’ll meet you in the mission room. File the report.” Inoichi gestured his subordinates out the door, then sat back down. “Ibiki-san. It’s been a while. How has the Analysis Team fared?”

“They’ve been doing well. I imagine they’re restless to start tackling more intense cases.”

“Sounds like you might have one.” Inoichi never had a crooked smile. He smiled like he meant it, every time. Ibiki chuckled, realizing just how much he’d missed their easy banter, but there was a purpose to this conversation—they could talk about better things later.

“Did you discover anything about the Nakamatsu clan?”

Inoichi scratched his chin. “The head was on the old council. The ones the revolutionaries could find were made examples of— they were pulling the bodies down when we arrived. His body probably ended up burnt—they’re still not letting any kekkei genkai or hiden out.”

“Yes, I’d assumed as much. Are there any others?”

“You’re building to something, Ibiki-san.”

“Answer the question.”

Inoichi knew by now to not be offended by how narrow-minded Ibiki could be when he wanted to. Of all the people in the Intelligence Division, there was no-one Ibiki trusted more.

“The youngest son is dead. He was found in the river. The matriarch of the clan is dead as well. Every member was wiped out, Ibiki-san. Every last one.”

There, Ibiki smiled. Inoichi hummed— curious.

“The heir of the clan came into our custody about a week ago.”

“You don’t say. Willingly?”

Ibiki shook his head. “Not in the slightest. I think he has information, but he can’t reach it.”

“A genjutsu barrier? Seals?” Inoichi leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Ibiki shrugged.

“Trauma. Both. I have his file in my office.” He stood and motioned for Inoichi to do the same. “Come with me.”

Inoichi walked at his shoulder. “I can get the Analysis Team prepped by tomorrow. I need to brief them on what we discovered, and anything I might find in the file. You understand.”

“Go ahead. Be prepared to cross-reference.”

“Naturally.”

The benefits of a quiet week included time to organize. His office looked a little less like a warzone than it had at the beginning, but—as always—the industrious work around the Division insured there was a small-growing pile of reports in his incoming work file.

Inoichi took a seat and hooked his arms on the backrest. “A week?”

“About, yes.” Ibiki took a sip of his coffee. Lukewarm. Maybe that was his curse—his drinks were always either too hot to drink, or not hot enough to enjoy. He put it down and dug Katsuo’s file out from under the ones about a suspected group of insurrectionists—a false lead. A group of thespians.

“A Kiri-nin?”

“Yes, Inoichi.”

“And he’s still alive?”

Ibiki wondered if Kiri-nin had that reputation everywhere, or if it was just because of him. Logic said it was just him— otherwise there would be even less of them running around, and the ones who managed to be kept alive long enough to actually be interrogated had excellent resistance training.

Not excellent enough to resist him. Hence, killing themselves at the first opportunity.

“Yes.”

“Do you think Tsunade--?”

Ibiki waved his hand. “She already has.”

“He’s about Ino’s age, isn’t he?”

“Stop trying to arrange marriages for my prisoners.” He pinched his nose. Inoichi laughed—despite himself, he laughed too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments make my day!


	7. Day Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What the—” Inoichi looked over his shoulder, alarm clear. Breakouts weren’t unheard of, but had become significantly rarer once Ibiki took over the division.  
> “Search for his chakra.” Ibiki dug the master key out of his pocket and unlocked the door, striding in and kneeling beside Nobuyuki to untie him. “Talk. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for... I don't know, child abuse?  
> IMHO hold on because things are about to start moving really fast. Also if I ended up making a playlist for this fic, would anybody be interested in reading it? It will be melodramatic and angsty just as this fic is. Yall already know what to expect.

“Welcome back, Inoichi-san.”

“It’s good to be back, Ibiki-san. I missed Konoha.”

Inoichi must have truly missed it. Ibiki was a notorious early riser, but he knew the Yamanaka much preferred to wake _to_ the sun, not before it, like one of the flowers he tended. Ibiki entered the T&I headquarters at six, as he always did, Inoichi at his shoulder. The building was quiet; a good thing. There were precious few captives here regardless, most simple enough to move through in a day or two and most passing Ibiki’s desk as nothing more than summaries of their interrogations and the information they’d divulged, and there wouldn’t be any new intakes from prisons until the start of next week. Unless Ibiki got a surprise delivery, things were looking to be quiet for the next few days.

But maybe not. The building was still dim, most of the lights turned off for the night. The chūnin on guard normally turned the lights fully on at five forty-five, put coffee on in the break room, and wrote up a summary of the night’s watch.

“I don’t like this,” he said aloud.

“Where’s Nobuyuki?” Inoichi muttered behind him. A peek inside the break room revealed neither the chūnin nor coffee. Inoichi’s hand reappeared from the inside of his trench coat with a kunai. Ibiki grunted and passed his office, turning instead down the hall that held cells. If Nobuyuki was anywhere, he would be here. He glanced through the windows; a captured Ame-nin curled up asleep, an Iwa-nin genin manipulated by his sensei into delivering a kinjutsu scroll into Konoha to a yet-unknown recipient pacing like a caged animal, and finally in Katsuo’s cell— Nobuyuki, facedown, his hitae-ate tying his hands behind his back. He was squirming, so he was alive, but his movements were strangely sluggish.

“What the—” Inoichi looked over his shoulder, alarm clear. Breakouts weren’t unheard of, but had become significantly rarer once Ibiki took over the division—because he’d improved security, and because only a fool would purposefully do anything to make Ibiki angry. Aside from now being angry at Katsuo, he was disappointed, because he hadn’t thought he was a _fool_.

“Search for his chakra.” Ibiki dug the master key out of his pocket and unlocked the door, striding in and kneeling beside Nobuyuki to untie him. “Talk. Now.”

Nobuyuki grabbed his hitae-ate back as soon as his hands were free, securing it around his forehead and tying it. “He blocked off the window to his cell with the blanket, so I assumed he was up to something and went in to check— then he touched me, and it was—it was strange. He did something to my chakra, then tied me up and locked me in here.”

Ibiki grunted. So he felt well enough to stage an escape attempt? Then he definitely was well enough to meet some of Ibiki’s lighter methods. Or harsher ones, if the light ones didn’t work.

He offered Nobuyuki a hand up. “Sounds like an effect of his clan’s kekkei genkai. Write down the incident in your report, then go home and rest.”

“Yes, Ibiki-san.” Nobuyuki nodded, then set off down the hall to the break room.

“He’s in the records room.”

“He didn’t try to escape?”

Inoichi looked down the hall, serious and grim. “He may have panicked once he realized he didn’t have a plan. But why?”

Ibiki thought. Then, he grunted. “I told him I would torture him tomorrow if he didn’t cooperate.”

Inoichi groaned. “Ibiki, we’ve been over this.”

Ibiki shrugged. It wasn’t a lie. He just hadn’t expected Katsuo to take action on it. Served him right for underestimating a Kiri-nin. They came to a stop in front of the record room, Inoichi’s hands back safely in his pockets.

“He’s hiding behind the far file cabinets.”

“Hm. Wait outside,” Ibiki directed. He opened the door swiftly—it was left unlocked, and if it wasn’t, he’d be only a little embarrassed—and caught the stifled end of a hitched breath forced quiet. “Give yourself up. You have no chance.” He could go back and retrieve Katsuo himself. That would be the swiftest and most effective way of ending this little dispute. Maybe not the safest—he was at the very back of the room, and the records room was a cluttered mess. Any number of traps could be set, and if there was any fight left in him it could spell disaster for some of Konoha’s most highly classified information. Not to mention that trick with Nobuyuki…

“Katsuo. Come out.” He hadn’t called him _Katsuo_ before. It was always Nakamatsu, or Kiri. Something to allow him distance and dignity. Ibiki _also_ didn’t want to sound like a Jōnin-sensei chastising an unruly genin, but this was a little too on the nose. “Is this the behavior of a clan head?”

That won a reaction, albeit slowly. Katsuo peeked his head around the file boxes, then the tenseness drained from his face, leaving him resigned. His ankle was still healing— he supported himself on the file cabinets and sturdy shelves until he was a mere yard from Ibiki. There, he paused. Ibiki saw that he was already tired from the small exertion of crossing the room, sagging against a support pillar before straightening up. Slight, brief moments of weakness that Ibiki had been seeing more and more often as of late.

He reached his hand out to Ibiki. It could be an innocent gesture asking for support— but if that chakra trick was something he could have done at any time, why wait until Nobuyuki was open for it? Ibiki didn’t know— but he wasn’t going to fall for it. He closed the distance and seized Katsuo by the wrist, twisting his arm, turning him and kneeing his thigh. Katsuo yelped, legs crumpling under him, going to his knees, only mildly slowed by Ibiki’s grip around his arm. He tucked his injured wrist to his chest instead of trying to support himself, leading to his arm being stretched painfully behind himself until he could brace himself and straighten enough. Ibiki took pity, of some kind, bending just enough to push Katsuo’s hand between his shoulder blades, which was surely painful but no longer agonizing, and had much less of a chance of dislocating Katsuo’s shoulder if he decided to thrash about. Ibiki doubted it.

“You said—” Katsuo’s voice was far less hoarse than it had been when he’d first spoken, asking about torture. Ibiki knew the ins and outs of voices, what any slight inflection meant, the slight pause that came before a lie. What he heard in Katsuo’s voice was his favorite.

Desperation. Something else lurked under the pleasure, though— disappointment. He’d expected better from Katsuo. 

“Clan head.” So that was it. He didn’t know, did he?

“That’s right.” Maybe not even that—if they were all dead, Katsuo wouldn’t have a clan to head. Privately, Ibiki didn’t foresee him leaving Konoha in the first place. His shoulders shook. Ibiki hoped he wasn’t going to cry. Instead, he bowed his head, tense and miserable in a way that Ibiki had never managed to make him, and pitched to the ground so suddenly that he would have dislocated his arm if Ibiki hadn’t followed him down.

“None of that. We’re going to have a _talk_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think-- I love kudos and comments!


	8. Day Six, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The Analysis Team is going to look through your mind to search out information about the coup that you don’t have conscious access to. You will cooperate totally with them.”  
> Katsuo nodded again.  
> “If you try anything, I’ll call one of our Hyūga to seal up every single one of your tenketsu. Do you understand me?”  
> “I understand!” Katsuo held up an arm in front of himself, more warding than aggressive. “Please don’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for emotional manipulation. Warning for child abuse. Warning for nongraphic descriptions of someone vomiting.  
> I don’t know when I started imagining Katsuo making squeaky toy noises when he gets tossed across the room. Probably somewhere in the third round of editing. Squeak!  
> Also, I did some thinking about Ibiki being in charge of the first question during the chūnin exams. It makes sense! He’s giving them a question that takes advantage of them psychologically to see if their gut instinct is to trust their team—if they’re a loyal shinobi who puts their village before themselves. It’s his JOB to get into people’s heads and play off of their instincts and weaknesses. My lesser-known theory is that having the scariest interrogator in the five shinobi villages in charge of the genins is the only way to get those squirrelly little bastards to listen.

He’d left Katsuo in the Honesty Room, a name that Ibiki and Inoichi had laughed over together; it started as one of the sterile interrogation rooms and over time accumulated some of the more esoteric torture devices, cruel-looking restraints, and the heady stench of however many bodily fluids had been spilled in there over time. The entire room radiated misery and pain. A few months ago, it had even been painted all black instead of the clinical whites and grays of the rest of the Intelligence Division. Ibiki didn’t use it to torture people much anymore, because the entire room was a giant, festering wound waiting to happen, and even if he intended to they usually broke down before he could.

“You’re attached.” Inoichi crossed his arms, looking at Ibiki in his peripherals.

“No, I’m not.” As usual, Inoichi was _probably_ right. Telling him no just meant Ibiki had given him permission to explain why. Ibiki crossed his own arms and leaned up against the wall.

“It’s unhealthy. It’s inappropriate, Ibiki.”

That was... unexpected. At most, Ibiki expected an accusation of being _soft_. He had a rebuttal for that. Not for _this_.

“What do you mean?”

Inoichi turned to face him properly. “You can’t try to help him in this... situation. That’s not your job.” Inoichi sighed. “I know it’s difficult to deal with. If it had happened to Ino, I’d be livid. Once we’re finished he’ll be transferred over to the Psych Division. He’s in good hands, Ibiki.”

Ibiki pinched the bridge of his nose. As usual, Inoichi was right. “I just have to do my job.”

“That’s right,” Inoichi encouraged. “Don’t rough him up too badly. I’m getting the Analysis Team together— like it or not, he’s an eyewitness.”

“I’ll break him in five minutes,” Ibiki said. Inoichi hummed.

“I don’t doubt that you could. Leave something for my team, please.”

Ibiki grunted and opened the door.

“In one _piece_ , preferably, Ibiki-san.”

Inoichi was a wonderful colleague for multiple reasons. Making Ibiki seem even more terrifying than he already was counted as one of them. Katsuo’s eyes were wide and blank with an emotion close to fear, but too distant and closed-off, and he was no doubt thinking about how many pieces Ibiki would have carved him into had Inoichi not requested he be kept in one.

Unluckily for him, he was frozen in the middle of the room. Ibiki wanted action.

He knew he’d regret it later, but he’d already shattered a week’s worth of building trust by twisting Katsuo’s arm and then dragging him through the halls by the hair. With a swift movement, he grabbed a handful of the drab brown shirt Katsuo had been given the first day he arrived. He didn’t expect struggle, and there was none. Katsuo merely stood motionless, either paralyzed or hoping Ibiki wouldn’t do anything if he didn’t move.

“I leave you alone for one day and you’re already trying to escape?” He shook Katsuo by the collar, shoving him back, pushing him across the room. Letting go of his shirt seemed to break whatever held Katsuo frozen, and he caught himself against the wall, wide-eyed and—finally—afraid. Something twisted in the pit of his stomach. Inoichi was right—he was attached. He pushed the feeling down and focused on his job. “If you wanted my attention, all you had to do was ask.”

That was mean. He knew as much. Katsuo didn’t even seem to have any fight left in him, but that didn’t answer the question of why he tried to make a break for it in the first place—even if it was as Inoichi had guessed, that he was trying to avoid torture. Ibiki liked when people were predictable. He could break the toughest cases that way— finding chinks in the armor, habits and stuck loyalties, and playing on them, tugging out insecurities and fears. It was easy to grind someone down when they provided their own grit.

Katsuo, though, was unpredictable. He was reacting to something that Ibiki hadn’t done to him. The fear, the jumpiness, the lack of predictable response— he was following rules that Ibiki didn’t know. Time to see if he could make some rules in _his_ favor.

Ibiki grabbed one of the manacles attached to the wall. It had about two feet of chain, just long enough for him to take a step forward like he was going to seize at Katsuo and secure him. He couldn’t get to Katsuo and keep his hold on the metal band. Katsuo knew this, he wasn’t blind, but he slid along the wall away from Ibiki anyways.

“Where did you think you were going to go?” He tightened his grip around the manacle. He wasn’t a fool; far from it. Katsuo had his attention fixed to his hand on the manacle. If Ibiki kept holding it, and if he stayed on the opposite side of the room, he was safe. It was a foolish conclusion to come to, but Ibiki saw that same kind of twisted logic in his brief stint in debriefing returning captives of other villages.

“I don’t know!”

“Did you think it was a good idea?” He snapped the manacle, causing the chain to impact on the stone wall with a heavy _clang_. Katsuo flinched. He pressed his back against the filthy wall. Strain showed in his injured leg, hitched up slightly to avoid pressure, but then— pushed against the wall, purposeful pain. Centering himself.

“I don’t know.”

Undeterred, Ibiki continued on. “If you’d actually gotten to the streets, what did you think was going to happen then?”

Katsuo’s eyes flickered from Ibiki’s face back to his hand. Silence. Fearful, choked, despairing silence. Ibiki let it hang for twenty seconds, then loosened his grip on the manacle ever-so-slightly.

“I don’t know!”

Ibiki frowned. He pulled the chain taut, a forceful yank, just to make sure he had Katsuo’s full attention. “What _do_ you know?”

Many other shinobi would have started crying by now. Katsuo was dry-eyed, though with how his voice was shaking it might just have been because he was still severely dehydrated. “I don’t want you to break me.”

Ibiki waited to see if he’d say something else, but he didn’t, evidently not wanting to push his luck; not knowing what Ibiki wanted to hear. Ibiki surmised he’d agree to anything to keep distance between them; but this was it, and he didn’t need to force closeness to get what he wanted out of this whole show. Katsuo had given him an opening.

“I’ll give you one more chance.”

Katsuo nodded. His eyes were so fearful and wide that Ibiki could see the entirety of his iris. “Please.”

“The Analysis Team is going to look through your mind to search out information about the coup that you don’t have conscious access to. You will cooperate totally with them.”

Katsuo nodded again.

“If you try anything, I’ll call one of our Hyūga to seal up every single one of your tenketsu. Do you understand me?”

“I understand!” Katsuo held up an arm in front of himself, more warding than aggressive. “Please don’t.”

Calling in a Hyūga was wildly overkill. Ibiki could get a seal to do the same thing much more quickly, and with far less spectacle, but the mental image was surely enough to keep Katsuo in line even if he and Ibiki’s ‘talk’ wasn’t.

“Don’t give me a reason to.”

He stepped back until he could drop the manacle without it colliding too hard with the wall. Katsuo stiffened, arm still in front of him.

Just until Inoichi and the Analysis Team was done. Then Ibiki could dump him on the psych-nin, those poor bastards. Then Ibiki could go home and drink until he forgot about the details on the medic-nin’s report. This _was_ unhealthy. Ibiki hated working on kids.

He sighed, very carefully, and offered his arm to Katsuo. He might not want to touch Ibiki, and Ibiki wouldn’t blame him. He’d done a little too much _grounding_ ; he followed the wall to hide a resurgent limp. To his credit, he didn’t hesitate in accepting Ibiki’s arm, either grateful that the brief, terrifying interlude was over or too cowed to be difficult. Ibiki was glad for that; it would have taken far too long to shepherd him to the Analysis Team’s workroom otherwise.

Once they got there, he let them take over the situation. In all honesty it was slightly anticlimactic to watch them work— once the subject was in the amplifier device, the only real struggle happened in their mind.

A minute passed. They were getting situated. Performing the techniques to make the subject’s mind susceptible. Identifying seals, barriers, and genjutsu.

Two minutes. Pulling the memories out. Separating them how they were needed— associations, people, places, order of events.

Three minutes. The actual process of the mindwalk, as it was colloquially known, the unenviable work of unraveling and seeing the memories. After thirty seconds of that Tonbo pulled away, covering his bandaged eyes with his hands, and turned aside to vomit on the floor. Ibiki followed him with his eyes— the curve of his back, how hard he was clutching his head, the lines of revulsion in his hunched shoulders until he spat to clear his mouth and straightened up.

“Are you alright?”

A foolish question to ask normally. Maybe it was a routine occurrence— none of the other mindwalkers surfaced. Tonbo was evidently too invested in keeping himself open to the jutsu to respond. He spit again, and returned to his amplification seal.

Inoichi was the fastest of them. He could process an entire day in roughly a minute; logically, that put the bare necessary time for this particular mindwalk at five or six minutes, if they each took a few days before the coup and then the day of.

Fifteen minutes later they were still going. If Ibiki had to guess, they’d made some sort of agreement to review all three months. He certainly didn’t envy them. Sure enough, they surfaced at roughly twenty-five minutes.

Inoichi turned to Ibiki, expression grim and determined. “We have intel.” Then, to his subordinates, “write up the report. Take it to the Hokage as soon as possible. Tonbo, go get a new shirt first.”

The Analysis Team scattered with a smattering of _hai_ s. Inoichi brushed his hair back, sighing, and walked to stand in front of Ibiki. He tucked his hands in the pockets of his trench coat, suddenly weary.

“I found out some other things. I don’t think they’d have much importance to you.”

Ibiki shrugged. “Tell me anyways.”

“I have names and faces. You’re never going to use them, though.”

Ibiki, although he lied on occasion, did not consider himself a liar, so he held back a response to that and smiled instead. “I thought you didn’t want me getting attached.”

They turned away, slightly, from Katsuo, unconscious in the amplification device.

“First, though. You were inside his head. Do you think it’s possible he’ll want to abandon Kiri?”

Inoichi nodded. “I think it would be more accurate to say that Kiri has abandoned him. I’ll contact the Hokage and the Psych Division and see if they can work anything out.”

“And if they can’t?”

Inoichi shook his head. “I _was_ inside his head. I went over your... discussions, and the past few days, from his point of view. He had the opportunity to kill Nobuyuki, and he didn’t.”

“Because he was scared of what I’d do to him.”

Inoichi shrugged. “Partially, yes. But he didn’t think it was right. It feels strange to say this about a Kiri-nin, but... he’s innocent in all this. Aside from Nobuyuki.”

“That’s a vote of confidence from you.”

Inoichi nodded. He pulled a pen from his pocket, leaning over to pick up a pad of blank mission reports. “I suppose it is. I’ll see you tomorrow, Ibiki-san.”

“Tomorrow,” Ibiki echoed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finished! I never want to write something like this ever again. It was a great experience but for my own mental health, I'm done. That being said, I do have like... 90% of the mindwalk written out, so let me know if you'd be interested in a chapter nine.


	9. Memorywalk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Analysis Team stood around the amplification device. It was steaming lightly in anticipation of a victim, pale strips of vapor rising and catching the light. Inoichi checked the clock. Five minutes. Ibiki should be bringing Katsuo soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot stress ENOUGH the DD:DNE tag, I’ve tried to keep things as opaque as possible without being overly explicit. This was fuckin hard to write, took a long ass time for how long it is, and I’m never coming back to it again!  
> Warning for rape; child abuse; panic attacks; knife injuries; mild eye horror.

The Analysis Team stood around the amplification device. It was steaming lightly in anticipation of a victim, pale strips of vapor rising and catching the light. Inoichi checked the clock. Five minutes. Ibiki should be bringing Katsuo soon.

He’d briefed the team and given them the option to back out. Normally, they had no choice; Inoichi hesitated to call something a special event, but the details noted in Katsuo’s physical qualified.

As a father, he was horrified. As the leader of the Analysis Team, he had to stay detached and impartial to avoid disrupting the jutsu.

The door pushed open, and Ibiki herded Katsuo inside the room. Katsuo stood very still as if to avoid attracting attention; it didn’t help him, and he was put into the device soon enough. 

“Into position.” 

Luckily, a simple pulse of chakra to the outside of the device was all that was needed to render Katsuo unconscious. His eyes shut and his head lolled forward, body slumping in the confines of the machine. Ibiki paced to stand next to the door, crossing his arms. 

“Let’s begin.”

Inoichi set his palm on Katsuo’s forehead and forged the connection his jutsu needed; unconscious, there was no resistance he could put up. One moment he was in the one of the many gray rooms of the Intelligence Division; the next, burrowed deep within Katsuo’s psyche with the others at his flank.

His mindspace was odd, a morass of interconnected mazelike passageways like the halls in a house, strangely quiet and absorbing all sound— enough to be disorienting— and shockingly large. There were chakra barriers that Inoichi recognized as self-made. In Katsuo’s mind, they took the form of paper curtains, the kind used as room dividers; a polite, unobtrusive notice that whatever was behind them should be left alone. Inoichi took a moment to glance at the designs in the off chance they gave anything away— he saw one with light pink cherry blossoms, pine forests scattered down the hallway, a field of wildflowers, a stream with colorful fish in it, but no explicit clues. 

He channeled a small amount of chakra into the closest barrier. It rippled, the rustling of paper, and folded in on itself neatly to reveal yet another hallway.

“They don’t need much to collapse. These weren’t... made to resist someone else looking.”

That explained why Katsuo didn’t have any useful information for Ibiki. He couldn’t even access his own thoughts— he’d walled them off, and was so steeped in politesse that even his subconscious obeyed the lines that had been drawn. Whatever he’d done with his chakra to keep himself from breaking was trying to steer Inoichi and his team away too; not unwelcoming, but impartial in the way a strong tide was impartial.

“Let’s continue. We’re getting closer.”

His footsteps made no sound against the wooden floor. He felt his breathing in his nose and throat, but didn’t hear it. Even the familiar chakra of the Analysis Team was fuzzed out and suppressed. If he didn’t know they were following behind him, he’d feel very alone.

There was a vague pull in his gut that he knew was Katsuo’s chakra, the center of his consciousness that everything was radiating out from. By choosing the right seals, he revealed new hallways, each discovery letting the pull grow stronger.

“Found it,” he said as the final seal— plain, unornamented white as opposed to the ornate designs of the far outside or even the simpler decoration of the past divider— folded neatly to the side. There hovered Katsuo’s brain, or at least the bundled-up core of chakra and memories that the Yamanaka jutsu sought out. It was in the center of his mind and the entire area was cast over a yawning abyss, enough to make Inoichi almost miss the endless hallways. “Everyone, into position.”

Thankfully his voice traveled. The strange, isolating feelings from Katsuo’s mindscape maze were gone. This atmosphere felt entirely different in an exceedingly similar way. His voice echoed back to him once before being utterly swallowed up. Each movement felt too present to him like he was feeling every part of his body move, down to his bones. It was scrutiny, but a shy and withdrawn sort; his actions were thrown into relief with paradoxically removed self-consciousness. It made his head hurt.

The team placed themselves around Katsuo’s brain in their usual arrangement, channeling chakra into it on Inoichi’s signal. Sometimes the subject pushed back; most often there was little resistance, unconscious and instinctive attempts to protect the most sensitive parts of a shinobi’s mind; most rapidly crumbling, unused to an attack that came from within. Inoichi grunted and strengthened the flow when an initial push yielded nothing. The rest of the Analysis Team followed suit, ratcheting up by degrees as their entry was denied.

Finally, the scrolls containing his memories erupted from his mind. Two of them were chained shut with lengths of rusted metal, the scrolls themselves utterly filthy with dirt, rust, blood, and Inoichi didn’t want to know what else. He put his hands on the side of the scroll and fed chakra into it; it shuddered, screeching and creaking, and finally the chains sloughed off and fell into the abyss.

“It’s completely shut.” Tonbo tensed, pushing the side of his scroll. It let off a grinding, shrieking noise of metal on metal, shedding flakes and grains of rust at first and then whole sheets and chunks. Tonbo cringed, but kept on; finally, the scroll unfurled.

“Get in there,” Mawashi directed, staring keenly at Tonbo. He nodded, and dove in. The empty clarity of Katsuo’s mindspace surrendered to the sensation of memory. 

Every mind had a unique way of manifesting memory. Katsuo’s reverted to the hallways of his mindspace, a long corridor of memories hidden behind paper dividers. Tonbo even heard muffled conversation behind a number of them, though they were incomprehensible and even when he focused he couldn’t make out individual words.

He returned to the task at hand.

Most memories were laid out as they should be, indicated on the scroll; Tonbo met his first barrier on the day after the coup. The hallway— the wooden floors, the paper dividers, absolutely nothing on the walls— was now recognizable as belonging to a house from the Nakamatsu compound. A childhood home, perhaps. Tonbo knew better than to fall for it.

His breath was deep and slow. It wasn’t a false memory, but separating himself from Katsuo was growing more difficult the further he delved into the hidden memories. This barrier had an oak tree on it, stretching over a still pond with pale green hills rolling in the background. A better thought. Safer. He channeled chakra into the wooden frame and slid it open.

Why would this memory be sealed away? Back in Katsuo’s body, cocooned in his sensations, there was pain but not any worse than the other memories. His vision was swimming from a blow to the head.

Fingers, at his mouth. His jaw was slack in a dazed haze. A salty, tangy taste at his tongue, then a jabbing pain at the base of it that made him retch and dry-heave.

Laughter. An index finger pushing his lips up from his teeth and pressing the sharp tips of his canines.

It was pain for the sake of pain. Tonbo moved on.

The next seal was the most heavily decorated, swirling branches of pink blossoms covering every inch. Once again, his breathing was impossibly slow and deep, like he’d been meditating for an hour. It made his limbs feel simultaneously weightless and heavy, disconnected from his body and too much effort to move.

He pulled himself out of the sensation and pushed open the divider.

They were chains, but not quite. It was an earth technique that held his wrists behind him. He couldn’t move or pull them away; the wash of chakra filled the small room, revealing only one person in the space with him.

What Tonbo noticed first was the pain. It covered his— Katsuo’s— entire body like fire, a prickling and searing sensation, but he was completely still and silent. The other shinobi, a lanky man with stringy black hair and chakra-masking tattoos, knelt down to touch his belly. Pale green— healing. It hurt. The absence of pain in one area only served to amplify the presence of it everywhere else.

“Aren’t you grateful?” His voice was low and mocking. It made Tonbo’s skin crawl. “Give me a thank you.”

Katsuo shook his head. Even that small motion of defiance was agony, and the medic-nin’s expression morphed from sickly-smooth smugness to wicked delight.

“If you don’t wanna tell me how grateful you are, I’ll make you show me.”

His hand skimmed down Katsuo’s belly, tracing the line of his hipbone and yanking his pants down by the waistband. Katsuo shrieked— he’d been silent because of injury in his throat, raw hoarseness from screaming— trying to kick out in protest, but the medic-nin was faster and had the upper hand; his ankle was caught and forced up, curling him into a painful position and jamming his knee against his chest. The sensation caused agony to spark all the way up his spine, body sore from limited movement and prior torment. The medic-nin gathered both ankles and held them over Katsuo’s chest. Tonbo’s view was blocked by his legs, and he pulled himself out of the physical sensations, but Katsuo’s screaming and begging made it clear enough what was happening.

Tonbo felt sick. He’d been warned about this. He knew it had happened, at some point; the file said as much, even if Inoichi hadn’t. His gut tied itself up in knots, rioting in his skin, a thick and acrid taste building in the back of his throat. He pulled from Katsuo’s mind just in time to avoid throwing up all over his workspace, sobs of shock and disbelief following him in the back of his mind.

The next minute passed in a blur. It was his duty to successfully parse the prisoner’s memories and dig out information; if that meant trudging through the hellish experiences he’d suffered, so be it. He meant to respond to Ibiki—he didn’t, too invested in the jutsu—and returned to his seal instead.

He surfaced back in the cave. He was in pain again. The medic-nin was off to the side with another shinobi, playing cards and idly chatting. 

Breathing was hard. It hurt. He felt like he was trying to breathe with an enormous weight on his chest— he looked down and noted the kunai stuck between his ribs. A punctured lung. Purposeful. He’d done something, not to warrant it, because there was nothing he could do in his state to warrant anything, but it was different from the usual torment. The conversation drifted, idleness settling into frustration. Tonbo tried to focus in on what they were saying.

He breathed too deeply and it hurt, so he moaned, breath hitching and causing more pain as the blade shifted in his flesh. Maybe they’d wait too long this time. Maybe they’d let him die. Please, let them let him die.

The medic-nin brushed off his thighs and stood, sauntering over to his prone body, and yanked the kunai from him with little ceremony. He wanted to scream. He bit his lip and did not. The pain sharpened, then fuzzed, then faded with the medic-nin’s glowing palm.

“Wanna say thanks?” Again, smug and probing.

“Thank you,” Katsuo managed, hatred worn down to exhaustion. The medic-nin smiled widely in a way that reminded Tonbo of a shark. He wanted to scream out curses at him, an emotion he was sure came from him only. He wanted Katsuo to fight it, not murmur out thanks like he was actually grateful. 

“So polite. But you still owe me for doing you a favor, don’t you?”

He was too tired and dazed to fight back this time, so the medic-nin carelessly knocked his legs apart with no resistance. The heat of pain was superseded by icy trepidation.

Tonbo let the memory fuzz, and moved on.

It was a struggle to leave the calm, empty, heavy halls and push open the next seal. A pond. Birds, nudged against the bank. Katsuo was fond of still, clear water, Tonbo knew from the other dividers studded down the hall. 

There were multiple people in the room this time. Katsuo wasn’t even tied up or restrained anymore; his ankle was fractured, so carefully and thoroughly it had to be purposeful, and the wrist on that same side ached like fire. Wrenched? Unmoveable, and terribly cold under his wrist. The rest of his body was stiff, so he hadn’t moved for hours, if not a day or more.

“Go check that he’s not fuckin’ dead.” Tonbo tried to place the voice— it was familiar, he’d heard it, gossiped with the man about fishing hauls. There was scraping behind him, and his hand was wrenched up. He— Katsuo, not him— felt the pain as stabbing heat, and twitched, and trembled, making a heartrending and pathetic keening noise that the medic-nin crouching at his side snickered at. He pointedly, pointlessly felt for a pulse in Katsuo’s wrist, then finally dropped his arm.

“He’s alive. He’s fine. The fuck did you do to him?” He kept talking, not expecting or welcoming a response. “You’re fucked up. I can fix you up, you know.” His voice dropped, addressing Katsuo now; conspiratorial and playful, making his stomach turn and clench. “You just gotta do something for me first.”

His hand relocated from Katsuo’s shoulder to his hip. Katsuo made a broken, hitched sobbing noise, evidently enough to attract attention from across the room.

“Can you give it a rest? That’s disgusting.” The man leaned back and crossed his knees. He tossed a kunai in the air, flipping it, catching it by the hilt; twirling it and popping it up, flinging it into one of the support beams with a dull thud.

“What can I say? I like to be hands-on with my... work.” But thankfully, he backed off. The pressure of his hand lifted. Katsuo let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He didn’t even know he still had the capacity to be grateful anymore, but he was suddenly, fiercely grateful for the pain, for the other man’s disgust.

“Whatever. Don’t do it while I’m around.”

Tonbo— no, it was Katsuo, it was him wanting these things and not Tonbo— still wanted to die. It felt like he’d been here an eternity, and felt like he’d stay an eternity more. Crawling someplace quiet and cool to let the hot pain fade away was all he wanted to do.

He withdrew from the memory, certain there was nothing to be gained from it. Inoichi was exchanging looks with Mawashi— they then looked at him, and he shifted his attention wholly to Inoichi, eager to focus on him instead of any more memories.

“Almost done.”

The room divider in front of it was a soft red, delicate pictures of lanterns and candles adorning the folds. All of the barriers had been elegant; he’d had plenty of time to do nothing but make himself forget. They’d been smoothed over with nicer things. This one was more recent and had no such luxury. From the file, Inoichi knew what to expect from the memory lurking behind the facade.

He channeled a small amount of chakra into the divider— not much, an almost polite amount, like tapping someone on the shoulder to get their attention— and it folded to the side neatly.

“Get rid of him.” It was the medic-nin, scowling, voice pinched and growling. He grabbed Katsuo by the hair and dragged him out of the corner he’d been left in. Katsuo spasmed and kicked, and then fell still. “Kaito, do something. There’s a bunch of Konoha ANBU sniffing around.”

“Throw him in the river. He’s mostly dead already.”

Kaito scoffed. Without waiting for a proper response, the medic-nin tossed Katsuo his way. It wasn’t much of a toss, more a halfhearted shove, and he didn’t even make it halfway. Kaito stood and put down his cards. He stooped to grab Katsuo by the collar of his ruined shirt— breathing suddenly corralled into tightness by new pressure— and dragged him to the entrance of the cave. “Just clean the damn place up. I’ll take care of the kid.”

Pain hazed the short journey. Katsuo’s consciousness found footing on his back, laying on the muddy riverbank. The mud seeped through the tears in his clothing, clammy and sticky. Kaito was seen only as a shadow against the midday sun on Katsuo’s eyelids. He opened his eyes, though the brightness was painful and unfamiliar, tracking Kaito as he came to stand over him. He flicked his wrist, rotating it, throwing his shoulders back and cracking his knuckles, then he brought his hands together in the rapid motions of a seal, chakra coursing down his arms to swell at the tenketsu in his palms— Katsuo screwed his eyes shut as brilliant orange gathered around Kaito’s palms.

Pain. Sudden, overwhelming the other aches, licking across his face. He screamed, but it failed to come out as more than a strangled cry.

The painful impact of a kick to his side sent him skidding down the bank and into the water, and he was too hurt to do anything but let the current sweep him up.

“Try and drown quickly,” Kaito called after him, but his voice faded before anything else could be made out; Inoichi wasn’t even sure if he had said anything else. The world remained dark, and now cold.

The memory flowed smoothly into the next one. Katsuo must have lost consciousness at some point.

Inoichi noticed pain, mostly. There was darkness. Water, lapping gently around him, nudging him up against the riverbank and the countless rocks rounded by the current. From Katsuo’s perspective, he was dragged out, then picked up; then, Inoichi couldn’t get anything else out of him, just darkness.

Consciousness came again in darkness— a new constant. He had never known true darkness before. Even with his eyes closed, his dōjutsu sought out chakra. His eyes must be injured. They must be ruined. He must be consigned to the darkness. Panic rose in his throat, but it felt distant and alien, and it ebbed away soon enough, and he felt nothing again. Emotions were smothered by pain. The room was cold, the floor hard and chill. An emotion close to fear again, but not quite, as he shifted on the cold floor and found his wrist and ankle splinted. It was uncomfortable, but the cold superseded the heat of pain. Inoichi took the day in leaps and bounds of nothing, of darkness and pain and chill, until the door opened and he— Katsuo— was greeted with a familiar voice. Ibiki had come to personally give him clean clothes, even if they were nothing but the plain, uncomfortable clothes that prisoners were given. Normally, an innocuously kind act like that would signal the beginning of the mind games Ibiki liked to play, and Inoichi recognized in his voice that was the intent— Ibiki had a personal vendetta against Kiri, too, that he would swear he didn’t, but Inoichi knew better. He’d never really forgiven himself for losing an entire cipher division; and at that point, he didn’t know whether Katsuo was a spy or not. That’s what was going through _his_ head at the moment of the memory. Katsuo was too exhausted to be anything but tepidly, wearily grateful. That, too, faded away into dark and chill.

The first shocks of real fear came when a guard led him to the interrogation room. It was his grip— it was his hands. Touching him. Nausea rose in his throat and it was only pain in other places that kept him from throwing up. It hurt to walk. His gait was the rocking, uneven pattern of clear injury, unable to even hide it and secure for himself the small dignity of appearing unharmed. Inoichi forged on. The pain and confusion sluiced off of him with ease of long practice, and soon enough Katsuo was too distant from his own emotions to be bothered overmuch by them anyway.

He skimmed over the interrogation, finding exactly what he expected—uneasiness, wariness, setting into hollow nothingness, dark and chill— in favor of the medical exam.

Before that, though, he’d been taken to the washroom to get his bandages changed and his hair washed. An unfamiliar male voice— fear. Touch, to his shoulder— panic. Katsuo had been convinced something terrible was going to happen, and had wished fervently for Ibiki to be there. Inoichi mentally noted to himself to tell Ibiki later.

He slowed the memory when Ibiki led Katsuo into the examination room. The walk over was uneventful and far less stressful than the day before. Externally, Inoichi could find no differences— Katsuo was still limping and Ibiki was still pulling him along as the guard had, purposeful but unhurried. As unhappy as Katsuo was with his situation, there were things he was starting to understand that made it bearable. Ibiki didn’t do things without reason; Katsuo didn’t want to give him reason to hurt him. It was still hazy on what those reasons were, but he’d been stumbling along well enough and Ibiki wasn’t actually going to torture him until he was less injured, and he hadn’t lied to him so far, so this _probably_ wasn’t torture.

He was suddenly unsure when he entered the room and heard the sound of a medic-nin’s kit clicking open. He sat primly on the chair where Ibiki left him, and willed the fear down and away. He’d had his bandages changed and his hair washed, and nothing bad had happened then, but he couldn’t shake the fear that something bad was going to happen. He didn’t want to put an act to _bad_. He didn’t want to let himself think of it. 

Inoichi wouldn’t get anything else out of that line of thought, and so moved on.

Yasu’s voice was understood universally to be calming; steady and understanding. He managed to convey a sense of being both completely capable and completely nonthreatening, a valuable asset to have when his primary patients were battle-hardened, jumpy shinobi.

Katsuo remained outwardly calm, but his chest felt like it was tightening, like his heart was banging violently side-to-side against his ribcage when Yasu asked him to undress. That was a habit of Katsuo’s, Inoichi noticed. As his emotions came back to him he was careful not to exhibit them— in the back of his mind, a phrase tugged at him, but he couldn’t place it.

 _Master it, or it will kill you_.

He put the odd thought to the side and focused back on the examination; on Katsuo’s concealed fear and Yasu’s attentions. Yasu touched him only when it was necessary, and briefly. His body was overtaken by alternating waves of prickling heat and heavy chill. When Yasu finally allowed him to sit back down, he crossed his ankles and clasped his hands together to keep them from shaking. 

His splints were removed. He could deal with that; he barely shook at all.

The bandages around his head were being unwound, and Inoichi was surprised that Katsuo started talking even though logically the information had been in his file— the emotions he could pick up under the thick veneer of broken neutrality radiated shame and fear. 

Inoichi— and Katsuo— expected the buzz of medical chakra to exacerbate the fear, not relieve it, but as Yasu’s hand pulled away and the darkness was overtaken by bright lights Katsuo allowed himself to be as relaxed as he’d been since entering the room. A buzz of chakra, in sight and sound, came alongside the light, and Katsuo saw the faint traces of healing chakra Yasu had used to heal his eyes drifting from Yasu’s hand. 

As professional as Yasu was being, he was a medic-nin— Katsuo’s breath felt forcibly neutral, and Inoichi was having trouble keeping up the barrier between their emotions now that there was a flood of emotions to block, sudden and intense and almost cognizant of Inoichi’s presence— pleading with him to be felt, to be acknowledged. The steady tide of fear eroded the barrier; when Yasu traced the infected line down his side, he dug his nails into his leg. It would be so easy for Yasu to slip his hand through the loose leg of his underclothes.

Most importantly, Ibiki wasn’t in the room. Yasu had asked him to leave. He could do whatever he wanted, and he was no doubt held in closer confidence than Katsuo. He could do anything, and Katsuo could only have to take it, and if it was bad he’d be blamed for it. Katsuo wanted to bolt. He wanted to attack Yasu, actually, because with his position Katsuo could snap his wrist and flee the room in under three seconds. He shoved the urge down. 

Yasu chose to heal the injury. There was no edge in his tone to imply he’d ever think of doing anything else. 

His voice was far from the medic-nin’s, and his touch never became sharp or painful. Katsuo was, somehow, beginning to trust him already. The pertinent content of the exam was located in Katsuo’s file. Inoichi didn’t want to finish witnessing the rest of it firsthand. 

Returned to his cell, Katsuo immediately curled up and slept. Inoichi stayed in the memory long enough to confirm that, yes, the dōjutsu really did never deactivate. He saw the ghostly figure of what had to be Nobuyuki patrolling the hallways, illuminated only by the flow of his chakra. It made it hard to sleep; the slightest disturbance of a passing figure him roused him. He could see his neighbor tossing and turning. He could see a shinobi across the hall sprawled on the ground. Dream-sleep was the only time that the outside world did not intrude, and still the Nakamatsu dōjutsu changed dreams into a vibrant wash of chakra that clung to the people there.

Again, he thought; _Master it._

_Master it, or it will kill you._

When the lights turned on, he shifted himself from laying down to seated, and dipped into meditation in an attempt to shore up his pitiful sleep. 

Inoichi didn’t mean to spend so much time in it, but the workings of the dōjutsu were fascinating. With concentration, he could tune out the chakra of others. It was always there; he could never truly ignore it, but he was able to quiet the moving shapes of color.

He recognized Ibiki’s, Inoichi noticed. He roused himself from the meditation when Ibiki’s imposing chakra signature approached his cell. 

The interrogation went about as well as Inoichi expected. Ibiki was reluctant to truly do anything to a child and by now was mostly confident that a child was all he was. Kiri, though-- he was a killer. Katsuo was wary, and still afraid, but acting like he wasn’t well enough. There was even an internal flare of indignation when Ibiki laughed at him. 

Katsuo did nothing but sleep for a full day after that. If Inoichi was forced to sleep in the way a Nakamatsu slept, he’d go mad; waking at the slightest foreign movement or chakra, falling into an intermittent pattern of dozing and lulling himself back to sleep, occasionally slipping into a dream-state only to repeat the whole pattern. Katsuo had _missed_ this while his eyes were injured?

By the time Katsuo was rested, he was already thinking up a way to escape. Inoichi should have expected as much from a Kiri-nin; but still, he was a little disappointed. _Escape_ , he was thinking; _subdue the night guard and run_. Leave before sunrise. Kiri is gone and Konoha will not offer sanctuary.

Nobuyuki went down easily enough. He didn’t even feel bad about it; with nothing to use his chakra for, he was able to tranquilize him and carefully lower him to the ground, secure his hands together, and slip out into the halls of the facility. He could have killed Nobuyuki, but it took too much effort. It wasn’t right. He wasn’t going to be doing anything for a while, and though Katsuo was not sick of killing and thought he never would be, killing Nobuyuki wouldn’t be right and wouldn’t accomplish anything besides.

He turned a few corners before realizing he was lost; Inoichi couldn’t follow his thoughts after that, too disjointed to be made comprehensible, but recognized readily enough that he was heading away from chakra signatures.

It got him into the records room, where he fled to the far back and crouched behind a file cabinet, theoretically to collect himself and venture forth again, to find the exit this time-- but he didn’t have the will to, or else did and was too afraid to grasp it. His hands were shaking. 

Time flowed differently, uncomfortably, and he wasn’t able to move until he sensed familiar chakra down the hall.

Sure, Ibiki would be angry, but surely he’d understand that Katsuo was harmless now? Even if he wasn’t, he was no match for Ibiki, and he could sense Inoichi’s chakra right outside the door. It felt strange to see his own chakra in that way, as a visible, almost touchable thing. 

Inoichi knew what happened next. Ibiki seized him, wrenching him to the floor, and all of a sudden Katsuo’s guilty submission flipped over on itself into panic and despair. 

_He’s going to kill me_ , he thought first. Then, _he’s too smart to kill me_. Then, following close at the heels, _he knows how to hurt me_.

His thoughts once more descended into fear that Inoichi couldn’t follow or pin down.

Inoichi followed the memory-- as well as he could-- through until nearly the present, up until Katsuo was rendered unconscious for the memorywalk.

“We have all we need,” he told the gathered team; they’d patch their respective memories together into a cohesive narrative later. “Withdraw.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments & Kudos appreciated! If I missed any tags, let me know-- this fic has gone into dark territory and I don't want to give anybody a surprise!


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